Art instead of other things

As much as I didn’t want to be in therapy on Monday, I was really looking forward to group on Thursday… only group got cancelled 😦

So, in an effort to keep on the right track with my coping skills, I did art all day…

I’m not sure if I posted about my experiment making my own canvas journal, but I worked on that and some ATC’s that will be going out on a swap (if I can ever decide which ones to actually send. I like them all for various reasons. Some have deeper meanings than they may appear to just by looking at them).

Anyway, here are pics of it all. Some are WIP pics, others of completed pages/cards… I used Inka Gold on the canvas. It doesn’t work well. The paint is cracking and chipping already. I need to come up with something as a hard cover for the journal to help protect it better. It works fine on solid objects, but it’s not meant to be pliable once dried.

I’m glad I had the distraction today. Between pms, the passing of one of L’s family members (and what it’s bringing up for me), increased body sensations, stress around one of the dogs having eaten a spoon a week ago and still not passed it, and the thought of a crazy day at work tomorrow, my thoughts have been hovering over the more negative coping skills. Similar to what I mentioned to Dr C on Monday, I just wanted to be drunk, high, and bleeding. Instead I played art and listened to the Ellie Goulding station on Pandora… yay for picking the more socially acceptable coping skills.

Journal page update

Worked on this page again today. Still trying to figure out what to do in the top left corner…

An artist friend suggested a nose, though at first I was thinking the lack of one is symbolic of how depression makes you feel like you can’t breathe. I dunno. It still needs something. The right side definitely needs work too, but that’s looking like a total overhaul. This side just needs *something*…

I have to admit though, I worked my butt off on those stupid strings sewing her mouth shut. I must have redone them at least 5 times. They look a bit better in the photograph than in real life, but I’m still pretty proud of them. I had originally planned to glue actual thread on there, but wanted a more 3-d look to her lips, so I painted them in… I’m sure they look amature to more experienced artists, but they’re the best I’ve done so far. I’m happy with how they turned out.

More art

Worked on this page today. I’ve had the under layer done since September, but hadn’t figured out what else to do with her. She’s still a work in progress (didn’t mean to make the gold above her eye look like bangs), but she’s getting there… gonna get rid of the bangs and sew her mouth shut… not sure what else will happen, but that’s part of the plan.

Gelatos over gesso’d magazine page. Feather is gesso’d steps of origami paper.

other art

I have a bunch of art journal pages that are just sitting there, waiting for progress. Some are further along than others, and many have been sitting for months. A few are actually finished. Most of them are “left over” supplies pages.

Studying Stones – art journal

I finished this page up the other day. It didn’t really have an original direction, but it went through a bunch of layers before I settled on an ending.

It started as lyrics to a Flyleaf song (So I Thought), then was covered by some vintage papers… I colored over those in gelatos thinking they would be more translucent, but I ultimately liked the way the colors spread, so I kept them. I still wanted some of the paper peeking through, so I used stencils and wiped away some of the gelato through the stencil…

I wasn’t sure what to do next, though I thought I would try maybe some zentangle-style things. I quickly remembered I kinda suck at the zentangle style though, so I went digging for other things. I found a print-out of the lyrics to Ani Difranco’s Studying Stones. I did an image transfer of that onto the b/g… then I went searching for reference photos of balancing stones (I had a specific picture in mind, but could not find it). Along the way, I stumbled upon a pic of stones that looked kinda like a little stone person, so I used that as a reference instead. More gelatos. I also added the phrase “you are magical” as I had seen it on one of my social media feeds and thought it would work for this piece (I know it was meant as an inspirational phrase, to mean that the reader is magical, but I also liked the concept of the little stone person believing the stones are magical in their own right: being unaffected by life, and simply being stones – as the lyrics to the Ani song describe).

Anyway, here’s the final result (and a few more “progress” shots)

I would still like to do something with or of my interpretation of the flyleaf lyrics at some point. There are some lines in that song which I can really relate to…

More art

Progress on “flashbacks” & some other stuff…

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Flashbacks (WIP)

This page has been one of the slowest yet. I’ve had the general idea for the top layer for over 2 weeks (though it went through at least 4 revisions before that. The original bg sketch was done back in June), but can’t seem to execute it the way I see it in my head. I totally screwed up the skeleton… now I’m waiting for it to dry before I can try it again.

Also, faces in profile are my toughest draw. They always look wrong, so I tend to just do a mass of hair covering where the face would be…

Here are some of the steps that I remembered to take pics of:

Themes much? (Art Journal)

Done over the last few days. I’m obsessed with the pebeo mirror foil… and needing some reminders apparently.
Also, new gelato colors are wonderful.

Distractions: some art journal progress from yesterday

Yesterday I spent the day with my friend who teaches the art journal classes. We were going to play around more making spray inks, but my car needed to go to the shop, so I ended spending the day with her. We ran her errands, then went back to her place. I played around with journal pages, and her dogs (omg are they ever friggin cute! They’re a pair of french bulldogs…).

I didn’t finish anything, but started a few backgrounds… actually, I finished the “heart” page that I had drawn the other night but really disliked (before and after images included)… The blue & black page I finished at home last night (and true to my printer-ink-as-spray-ink history, I’m still waiting for the black ink to dry 24 hours later).

I also got some of the mirror foil that my friend has, and added it to my “create” page from last week. The glue used is really cool. It was still tacky and workable a week after application. It’s supposed to remain tacky for use with the foil for like 2 weeks, and I believe it. I even had dust on my journal, and wax on other parts but the foil stuck to the glue lines. Very cool!

The other 3 pages are still just backgrounds. We did end up making the additional spray inks, but I left them at her place for the time being. I’ll do a whole other post about that experience, as color theory doesn’t quite work the same with clothing dye (who knew blue and yellow wouldn’t mix well. We got a light olive-green, a slightly darker yellow, a slightly greenish blue, and a black, but no straight-up green)…

Anyway, here are the backgrounds and the finished pages in no particular order.

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art journal progress, new coupons, and more paper cranes!

Been playing a lot with art of late. I tried out 3 image-transfer techniques. I did some more therapy coupons, and I added to the crane invasion yet again.

First up, the image transfers. I used generic materials that I had at home already, no need to buy their products or anything… I tried the packing tape technique first (she’s quite a bit more anal than I was… I like the imperfections, bubbles, and wrinkles).  1. Put overlapping pieces of packing tape directly on the image/words you want to transfer. 2. Soak in/with water untill the paper is saturated. 3. Rub off the paper fiber, this may take a bit of working at it to get it all off, but it can be done. the image will remain on the tape, and in theory, the tape will remain sticky (mine did not so I “glued” it down using acrylic gel medium. you could also probably use modge podge or any more flexible glue that dries clear). 4. Apply the tape with the image to your desired background. Keep in mind the image will be somewhat translucent, so you will be able to see the background underneath it.

I wanted to do more with the piece, so I sanded the tape slightly to give it “tooth” for anything I may choose to put over it (there were some words I wanted to cover up). I then gesso’d the spot I wanted to cover. I thought this was a good opportunity to test out the gesso image transfer method. I made sure to apply enough gesso so that it would stay wet as I applied the image (face into the gesso) I wanted transferred. I smoothed it out and applied pressure to make sure all of the image stuck to the gesso. I waited until the gesso was (almost) completely dry (should have been more patient, but… well, I wanted to keep working), then saturated the paper. Once the paper was sufficiently soaked, I rubbed off the pulp. The image transferred really well, and just as vivid as the original photo because the gesso gives an opaque white bg. Had I been patient and waited for the gesso to try completely before removing the paper pulp, I should not have the “holes” in my image where I wiped away the gesso base as well as the paper pulp. oops! That’s ok though, because it goes with the feel of the rest of the piece.

I really liked the results of the gesso image transfer, so I decided to do a layered version. I needed a clear medium for transfer so that the bottom later could be seen. I think I had heard mention fo using gel medium to do transfers. I have a bunch of the stuff, so I decided to try that. I made sure to gesso the journal pages with at least 2 layers before applying the thicker coat of gesso for the transfer. Had I been more careful here (more layers, letting it dry completely), I would not have ended up with large chunks of the image missing. Anyway, I applied the background image (picture I found on the web) with the gesso transfer technique, and managed to rip my pages as I rubbed off damp gesso with the paper pulp (lack of patience on my part).

I covered over that with two layers of gloss gel medium (needed to make sure I covered the exposed paper and make it all more water-resistant again). I then did the same technique as the gesso transfer, only using the gel to grab the ink off the image… For this layer, I wanted some writing. I copy-pasted lyrics to some songs I like into a word document, formatted the way I wanted them to appear, then saved a screenshot of the text. I took it into a photo editing program (Sketchbook Pro), and flipped the image so the text printed out backwards (it will end up the mirror image of it once transferred onto the gel or gesso). I smoothed the image onto the thicker wet gel medium layer and set aside to dry. I was determined to do it without ripping the base layer or more of my page this time. Once it was completely dry, I soaked and peeled the paper. I purposefully left some imperfections in the transfer (bubbles, brush marks in the gel, uneven gel layer) all to give a more worn/grunged-up look to it.

 

I finished it off with some painting… De would note here that the blanketed girl showed up again. She’s in a lot of places… The dog is also a recurring character (both from a shadow-puppetry piece I never really finished) and is based on the puppy (his silhouette makes for easy-to-interpret art). I decided to keep this piece monochromatic. I don’t think it would have had the same feel with color… Anyway, I figured this worked for the 2014 100-Theme Challenge #14 – Heaviness.

I liked the way it all worked, and much prefer the gesso or gel methods to the tape method, though the tape gives a cool transparent look to the image…

I was having so much fun with the image transfers, I decided to try it on some of the coupons. I think they turned out better (practice makes perfect when you are trying to get just the right imperfect look to the piece). I also had tried my hand at stamp carving (I had supplies on hand from L, who was big into the letterboxing thing a few years ago. They would carve their own stamps). I used the new peanuts stamp on a few of the coupons. I also just painted a few of them. Over-all, I had a lot fo fun trying out new things for the past week! (remind me to extol the virtues of gelatos some day… for right now, I’m too tired to explain them. Faber-Castell makes them, you can look up more info if you are too curious to wait – which honestly, may be a better choice as I fear I may forget to come back to them)

Finally, some updated pics on the crane invasion. There are now 315 (I can’t add this late and shorted myself by 10 when I made up the pic)